The Scarlet Line
by Paimpont
Summary: The Cullens finally see a psychoanalyst. Edward is hallucinating - he thinks he's a vampire. What lies behind his bizarre delusions? And what dark secrets are the Cullens hiding? The requested sequel to The Serpent and the Mirror.
1. Chapter 1

[Author's note: This is the sequel to The Serpent and the Mirror, but this story can be read independently as well. I have modified the names of the doctor and his receptionist from the previous story to ensure that this story makes sense on its own. Hope you like it! I would love your feedback, as always.]

_From the Files of Dr. D.: The Case of Edward C._

_Week 1._

I saw a new patient today, a seventeen year old boy suffering from vivid hallucinations. Edward Cullen was brought in by his concerned parents, Dr. and Mrs. Cullen. The initial letter I received from Dr. Cullen, Edward's father, outlined the basic facts of this bizarre case.

Over the past year, Edward has suffered from gradual onset of depression, accompanied by powerful hallucinations and the firm conviction that he is a vampire. He believes that he is no longer human, but an immortal vampire, subsisting on blood alone. But not only does he believe himself to be a vampire; he is further convinced that his entire family are vampires also: His father and mother, his sisters Rosalie and Alice, and his brothers Emmett and Jasper. He claims that his father, Dr. Carlisle Cullen, already a vampire, transformed him into one as well by biting him as he lay dying of influenza in 1918, and that the other family members were also dying mortals transformed by Dr. Cullen's bite. Needless to say, his family is worried sick about his extraordinary delusions. Edward is so convinced of the absolute truth of his hallucinations that he even broke up with his girlfriend, the lovely Bella, in order to protect her from his own dangerous blood lust. The Cullens are deeply touched by the fact that Bella, even when faced with her boyfriend's rejection and his deepening mental illness, has remained loyal to Edward, and is in constant contact with the Cullens to enquire about his well-being.

The Cullens are a close-knit family, and they are all terribly worried about Edward's fragile mental health. His parents have taken him to see a number of experts before being referred to me. They were all in my waiting room this morning, including the eternally loyal Bella, who had insisted on accompanying them.

I decided to speak to Bella first. Girlfriends often know a great deal more about young men than even the most observant family members.

Oh, dear me! Bella really was the most enchanting creature I had seen in a very long time. Her luminous, ivory skin, her huge brown eyes, the dark hair cascading over her shoulders, almost too luxuriant for her slight figure -what kind of illness would cause a seventeen year old boy to break up with _her?_

"Doctor, do you think you can help Edward?" Her voice was a whisper.

I smiled reassuringly. "I will certainly do my best, my dear. Now, please tell me about Edward, and about your relationship. I understand that his hallucinations about being a vampire only began in the last year or so?"

She nodded. "Yes. I - I was terrified when he first began... to speak of things like that. To speak of being a vampire." She smiled briefly. "To tell you the truth, doctor, he was so earnest and so convincing when he first began talking about being a vampire that a part of me was actually wondering if... if he was _speaking the truth..._ I know it sounds ridiculous. But you see, he did not seem mad at all, then, just ... well... _concerned_. About me, mostly, and what he might do to me accidentally, since he was a vampire."

I leaned forward. "And what exactly was it that he was afraid that he might do, my dear Bella?"

Her lovely ivory face grew even paler. "He - he was afraid that he might _attack _me and drink my blood."

"Ah." Not, of course, what a young lady likes to hear from her beau. "I see. And what would have ensued, should he have made that unfortunate decision?"

"Well..." She frowned. "From what he said, I gathered that he believed that if he had actually bitten me, I would either have been killed or turned into a vampire as well."

"A fellow vampire?" I raised an eyebrow. "And did you get the impression that he... er.. _wanted_ to bite you?"

She flushed. "Oh, yes, very much so, but he was said he was afraid. Afraid that I would lose my soul if I became a vampire as well. And he said he would rather lose me than risk me losing my soul."

"_Lose _your soul?" I wrote furiously on my pad. "And if I may ask, how long had the two of you been together, before all of this happened?"

"Just about a year."

"I see. And, if you will permit a rather indelicate question: I assume the two of you had been... well, intimate?"

She blushed, hard.

"Oh, no, doctor, we hadn't. As a matter of fact, I had suggested it a few times. I was... I am very much in love with him, you see. But Edward is rather old-fashioned when it comes to that. He believed that... that intimacy should wait until marriage."

"Did he now?" I have the deepest respect for old-fashioned moral principles, of course, but based on my extensive experience as an analyst, I would say that those principles tend to vanish like the morning dew when young men encounter a girl as lovely as Bella. Interesting!

"Hm. And had you noticed anything peculiar about him prior to the time when the hallucinations began?"

She shook her head. "No, not at all. He was just a normal boy. Not ordinary, perhaps, but normal. He was so incredibly intelligent, and he seemed to know _everything._ So extraordinarily well read, as if he hadn't just read the history books, but actually _remembered_ the events... I remember the history teacher actually asking him, jokingly, if he had been _there _during the Russian revolution, he seemed to know so much about it. And he was so romantic_, _in this sweet, old-fashioned way. He would always stand up when I entered the room, and remain standing until I sat down. Seriously, who _does_ that in this age? And he would open doors for me, and give me his coat if I was cold, things like that."

"Very nice."

"It was terrible, when he broke up with me. I thought I was going to die. I couldn't understand what was happening - we had been so wonderfully happy until then. We were so much in love, and it felt like something very different from just a high school crush. It felt like something, well, _eternal... _And even when he broke up with me, he claimed that he still loved me, and that he always will. But he says that he must stay away from me now, for my own protection, since he is dangerous, since he is a _vampire..._" There were tears in her eyes.

_He is breaking up with her for her own protection. Perhaps some still rational part of Edward's mind is realizing that he is becoming a danger to others, that his illness may cause him to harm those he loves? Is his believed vampirism merely a symbol for his mental illness, for some kind of homicidal impulse that he recognizes within?_

But why does Edward believe that his condition began with a bite from his _father?_ Even the most bizarre delusions usually signify something: The subconscious is communicating hidden truths through a strange language of symbols and concealed meanings. He believes that all his family members were transformed into something no longer human by Dr. Cullen's bite... Is there some history of terrible abuse, perhaps, in the doctor's family?

But if there is, why would he bring Edward to _me_? If Dr. Cullen was an abuser, surely he would wish to avoid detection, rather than bring his victim to see a renowned psychoanalyst? No, it can't have been that.

But _something_ must have happened to Edward, some horrifying event must have triggered his flight into madness. I need to find out more, about his life and about his family.

"Bella, please tell me more about the Cullens. Before I speak to each of them in person, I would like to hear what you, as an outsider to the family, think of them. What are your impressions of the family?"

She smiled a little. "You know, Doctor, I don't really feel that I am an outsider to the family. Ever since Edward and I started dating, they have been so sweet and so welcoming. It's like having an extra family of my own. My own parents have been divorced since I was little. My mom loves me, I'm sure, in her own way, but she has always been off traveling somewhere with a new boyfriend or another. And even when she's been there, she's always been so helpless, I feel like I'm the one taking care of _her_. And my dad's so sweet and loving in his own awkward way, but he works a lot, so even when I moved to live with him, I never really felt like I had a family too look after me. But Dr. and Mrs. Cullen have been like parents to me ever since I met them. They are the nicest people I've ever met. They are almost _impossibly_ good, if you know what I mean. They've treated me like their own daughter, from the very beginning, cooked for me and cared for me and listened to me. They are such compassionate people. You know, of course, that all their children are adopted?"

I frowned. "No, I didn't know that. Dr. Cullen did not say anything about that in his letter."

"Oh, he wouldn't." Bella sighed. "Dr. and Mrs. Cullen have always loved all their children as if they were their own flesh and... _blood_. Oh, I've started hating that word... It's all Edward can ever talk about these days."

She shuddered.

"So all the Cullen children are adopted?" This was interesting news. "Do you know anything about their backgrounds?"

Bella thought for a moment, her raven hair falling like a veil in front of her down-turned face. Good God, she was beautiful! Edward must have caused more than one jealous rival to smile when he felt compelled to end his romance with Bella...

"Well, let's see. They adopted Edward first, when he was just a baby. They've had him the longest, and Mrs. Cullen told me that he has always been the closest to her heart for that reason. Poor Mrs. Cullen lost a child of her own, a long time ago, and after that, she could no longer have children. It's terribly sad; I think she is the sort of person who was always meant to be a mother."

"Do you know how her own child died?"

Bella shook her head. "No, she never said. I think it was still too painful for her to talk about. After Edward, they adopted four other children, but they were older, not babies. They all came from troubled backgrounds, and had nowhere to go until the Cullens gave them a home. Alice was in and out of mental institutions for years as a child, but she has been happy and healthy after she found a home with the Cullens..."

_Has she, now?_

"... and Rosalie was a young, homeless victim of abuse and rape. Emmett was homeless as well, a young teen living by himself out in the forest when the Cullens heard about him. Rosalie and Emmett are in love. I know, it seems a little weird at first, since they are adopted siblings, but they are not really related, so it doesn't really matter, does it?"

"I suppose not. And Jasper?"

"Jasper - He was a child soldier. I know, that isn't supposed to be possible in the U. S., but he lied about his age and forged some papers, apparently, and went off to Iraq. Dr. Cullen met him in the hospital after he was sent home with life-threatening wounds. He was able to save Jasper's life, but realized that the boy was much younger than his papers indicated. Jasper never spoke about his past, but it was clear that he had no family to look after him, so Dr. and Mrs. Cullen decided to adopt him as well."

_A psychiatric patient, a homeless abuse victim, a feral boy from the forest, a child soldier. And now also a self-proclaimed vampire. _The Cullen family was getting more interesting by the minute.

I pressed the intercom button: "Miss M., would you mind sending the Cullen children in for a moment? All of them, except Edward. I'll speak to him separately in a minute."

The door opened, and the four young Cullens stepped into my office. I drew my breath sharply. I don't know what I had expected, but _not this. _Perhaps I had imagined, after hearing Bella speak of their troubled backgrounds, a band of frightened teens, their past suffering still visible in their young faces... But what I saw, instead, was a vision of beauty. The Cullen children moved with grace and easy elegance. And their faces... Their faces were to _die_ for... Alice, the smallest one, was dark, with a delicate elf-like beauty, Rosalie was golden-haired with stunning violet eyes, Emmet tall and handsome with dark curls and a mischievous spark in his golden eyes, and Jasper equally tall, but leaner, with a shock of honey-blond hair. They were all impossibly, inhumanly beautiful.

I was confused. Did the Cullens only adopt future runway models?

They fluttered elegantly into my office chairs and looked at me with an air of expectation. Alice was the first to speak. "Oh, please, can you help Edward, doctor? No one else has been able to, but Carlisle says that you are an _amazing _doctor..."

Carlisle, huh? She is not calling him "dad" or "father"... I wonder why.

"It's completely freaky, this vampire stuff." This was Emmett. "It just came out of nowhere, too. He was always just a regular kid, until he began talking about _blood..._ Isn't there some kind of medicine you can give him or something, that will make him all right again?"

"I will do my best," I assured him. "Do any of you recall anything at all that occurred around the time when Edward began hallucinating, or right before that? A traumatic event of some kind?"

They all shook their heads, perplexed.

"No, it just came on suddenly," Alice whispered. "And he even broke up with poor Bella, even though we could all see plainly how much he loved her..." She put her arms around Bella. The two girls seemed very close. _Too close?_

"And..." I felt very foolish, but I had to ask. "And I don't suppose you really _are_ vampires, are you?"

A little giggle from Rosalie, and a roar of laughter from Emmett. They all shook their heads. Jasper was looking at me doubtfully, and Alice leaned over and whispered something in his ear. My hearing is quite excellent, and I think what she said was something like: "It's OK, sometimes the best psychoanalysts are the ones that are a little odd themselves."

Huh.

"Well, let me know if you can think of anything, _anything _at all, that can shed some light on Edward's condition." They nodded gravely and disappeared back out into the waiting room, Alice's arm around Bella's shoulders.

I had asked them to send Edward in, and he appeared in my office a moment later. Good God, he looked as perfect as his adopted siblings! Pale skin, eyes of an appealing topaz color, high cheekbones, hair of a beautiful bronze shade. But the oddest thing about him, I thought to myself, was that _he didn't seem odd at all_. He seemed absolutely normal, absolutely rational. He sat down in one of the chairs, completely at ease.

I eyed him closely. "So," I began. "You are a vampire..."

He nodded gravely. "Yes, doctor," he said simply. "I am."

He was so composed, so matter-of-fact about it, that I began to understand how Bella could have wondered, in the beginning, if he was actually speaking the truth. Oh, what a ridiculous thought! I brushed the bizarre idea firmly away from my mind.

"And how long have you been a vampire?"

"Since Carlisle bit me. In 1918."

Carlisle. Not "father".

"I see. And the rest of your family members are also vampires?"

He nodded. "Yes, they are, although they have to pretend otherwise, of course. But Carlisle said I could speak to you about it. I don't understand..."

A look of sudden bewilderment crossed his face. "I don't understand why they are pretending when they are speaking to _me._ Why they are suddenly pretending, even among ourselves, that we are all humans." Poor boy.

"And Bella?" I prompted gently.

A look of profound sadness cast a shadow over Edward's handsome features. "Poor Bella!" There were tears in his eyes. "I hate causing her pain, hated breaking up with her. I love her more than anyone could possibly imagine. But what could I do, doctor? I cannot endanger her life by continuing to see her. Perhaps you can talk some sense into her, doctor. Please tell her to stop worrying about me. Please convince her to forget about me. Tell her I'm lost beyond any hope of recovery. _Tell her I'm too dangerous..._"

Now, this was getting fascinating. That he loved Bella with all his heart was evident. And it was equally clear that he feared for her life._ Why?_

"I know you don't believe me," he whispered. "After all, very few people know that vampires are real, that we do exist. Of course you must think that I am mad, that this is all a delusion."

Hm. The boy was both intelligent and lucid. I had not expected this.

His golden eyes held my glance. There was a fierce urgency in his gaze. "But doctor, I need you to try to understand. Try to put your preconceived notions of what is possible and what is not aside for a moment, and try to imagine, even for a few minutes, that I am telling the truth. _I am a vampire._ We all are, the whole family. I thirst after Bella's blood, after the intoxicating sweetness of her scent. But my longing for her can kill her. Now if you were to believe, even for a second, that this could be true, wouldn't you have to admit that I am doing the right thing? Wouldn't you realize that she is far better off away from me?"

The earnestness in his eyes was strangely... convincing. (What? I must be overworked. Did I just write that? I think I will take a vacation once this case is over...)

"I will do what I can," I said. "Both for you and for Bella."

He nodded. "Thank you, doctor."

And he told me the rest of his story, with a curious composure as if he were discussing the weather. He told me about his transformation into a vampire after being bitten by Dr. Cullen, about his adopted siblings undergoing a similar change, about choosing to drink animal blood instead of the blood of humans, about his strong attraction to Bella, about his thirst for her blood.

_Blood. He has a strange obsession with blood. Blood, the scarlet line that runs through all his hallucinations. _I wonder what lies behind this curious preoccupation with blood? _The life of a creature is in the blood..._ Isn't that from the Bible? Blood as a symbol of sacrifice, of atonement, of violence... Blood, the symbol of death, but also of life, of family, of linage... Bloodlines, family lines... But the Cullens are not related by blood, at least not in the ordinary sense.

When Edward finally left, I sat still for a moment, pondering. I am used to talking to mentally ill patients. And Edward, poor boy, was definitely in that category. And yet... Yet, there was something about him that seemed so - So what, exactly? _So sane. _Odd.

Finally, I spoke to Dr. and Mrs. Cullen. There were as exquisitely lovely as their children, and equally graceful. Dr. Cullen was blond, impossibly handsome, with the same golden eyes as Edward. Esme's caramel colored hair fell in soft ringlets about her enchanting heart-shaped face. To my surprise, they looked quite young, barely a decade older than their adopted children. _But that can't be. They adopted Edward when he was very young. _

Carlisle Cullen reached out and grabbed his wife's hand. Carlisle and Esme. A lovely couple, with oddly old-fashioned names. They looked at me, beseechingly. "We have visited so many doctors by now," whispered Esme. "But no one has been able to help Edward at all. He still believes, poor dear, that he is a _vampire..."_

"Tell me more about him, about his childhood, his character..."

Esme's expression grew softer. "Oh, he was always the _loveliest_ child. So sweet-tempered and so loving. He is profoundly intelligent, but quite modest about his gifts. He really is the perfect boy..." She sighed.

"Did anything ever happen to him when he was a child, or more recently, anything dramatic that would result in a trauma? Anything violent, disturbing, frightening?"

There was a slight hesitation before Esme answered. "No, nothing. It's so _odd, _really, that it's Edward who is the one who is ill. After all, he's the one who's been with us since he was a baby, the one who has lived a protected life with us, while the others... Oh, they have gone through so much, all of them, before they became our children. I have always worried about _their_ health, after everything they have lived through... And yet, they are all perfectly healthy..."

_So it would seem. _

"And your children all get along with each other?"

"Oh, yes." Dr. Cullen was the one speaking now. "They are the best of friends. They have always been very close, very loving. We were a little concerned at first, Esme and I, when it became clear that Emmett and Rosalie were in love with each other, but they are very sweet together. And Jasper and Alice as well, perhaps... Edward was quite happy for them, although he was sort of the odd one out. But when he met Bella, we were all overjoyed. He had finally found his soul mate as well. Such a lovely girl..."

Oh, it all sounded so perfect. Much too perfect. There must be _something_ under the surface, something that would cause a sweet, sensitive boy to suddenly lose his sanity...

"Is there _anything_ else you can tell me, Dr. Cullen, that could shed some light on Edward's condition?"

A look of indecision passed over his handsome features. "I - well, there is one more thing, I suppose..."

"Yes?"

"I...I hesitate to bring this up because I truly don't know what to make of it. I don't see how this could have anything to do with his delusions, but the coincidence is rather chilling. It's all nothing, I'm sure, but I feel I should mention it to you nevertheless."

He produced an old yellowed newspaper clipping from his coat pocket and handed it to me. "This - this is about Edward. About how he was found as a young child, before we adopted him. We have never shown this to him, since we felt it would be too much of a shock for someone of his sensitive temperament."

My curiosity piqued, I scanned the newspaper article quickly. The headline read "Tragic Mystery in Forks". As I read on, I felt a chill run down my spine.

_Two young children were found by a deer hunter in the forest near Forks this morning. The oldest child, a boy of around four years of age, was dead, while the younger, a boy of around two, was still alive. It is unclear how the older child died. Massive amounts of blood were found near the scene, but the child who died had no injuries, except for a tiny cut on his neck. An autopsy will be performed to determine the precise cause of death. In spite of the efforts of both the Forks police force and investigators from the FBI who were called to the scene, it has not yet been possible to identify the two children. Their strong resemblance to one another suggests that they may have been brothers. The police and the FBI are urging anyone who has any information that could have the slightest bearing on the case to contact them immediately at the following number..._

"The mystery was never solved," said Dr. Cullen quietly. "To this day, we don't know where Edward came from, how he and his brother came to be out in the woods on their own, or how his brother died. It was concluded that an animal must have killed the child somehow, although it was never clear how an animal could have killed the boy without leaving more extensive injuries."

We sat in silence for a moment. I looked at the newspaper picture of the beautiful bronze haired toddler that had been Edward Cullen. He looked like an angel. I shivered slightly. _An animal killed his brother... __Surely this was not the face of that animal-? No, impossible. He was a baby..._

Dr. Cullen went on: "We read about the story in the newspaper, my wife and I, and we both felt terrible for the little boy. We had just found out that we were unable to have children of our own, so the decision to adopt him was natural one once it became evident that no family was stepping forward to claim him."

"I see. And you have no sense that Edward ever remembered what had happened? He would have been too young to talk, perhaps, when he came into your care, but he may still have retained a memory of sorts of the tragic death of his brother - ?"

Dr. Cullen shook his head, slowly. "He didn't begin to talk until almost a year later. I suppose all the dramatic changes in his young life delayed his speech. And when he did talk, he didn't seem to be aware of anything that had happened before he became our son. Except - "

"Except what?"

Dr. Cullen swallowed. "_Except for the fact that he was always terrified of blood_. If one of his little playmates got the slightest cut or scrape, he would grow pale and run from the room. I suppose that his mind must have retained some sort of vague memory of the terror of his brother's death, lingering only as a pathological fear of blood..."

"What about his own cuts and bruises? Did he react similarly to seeing his own blood?"

"Hm." Dr. Cullen thought hard. "You know, I don't recollect ever seeing him getting any cuts or scrapes, even as a young child. Rather odd, now that you mention it. I don't know if it was because he was so careful not to get hurt, or whether he was just very coordinated. He is rather graceful, you know."

And so was Dr. Cullen, as he got up and walked to the door with his beautiful wife when our conversation was over.

I had to do it. Perhaps it was a little melodramatic, but my curiosity got the better of me. I pushed the intercom button on my desk. "Miss M., would you mind sending Edward Cullen back in for just a moment, please?"

"Yes, of course."

Edward entered a moment later. "Yes, doctor?"

I observed his handsome face closely as I pulled out a paper knife from my desk and gave myself a quick cut in the finger. A few drops of red trickled out.

A slight sound escaped Edward's lips, and a moment later, he lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. He had fainted.


	2. Chapter 2

_From the Files of Dr. D._

_The Case of Edward C., __Week 2:_

_Blood lust... _

Edward thirsts for Bella's blood. What suppressed desire does this blood lust represent? A forbidden sexual attraction? Edward speaks of Bella with a longing that suggests to me that he is deeply attracted to her, both physically and mentally, and yet he has insisted that their relationship must remain unconsummated. Why?

_Because he is immortal and she is mortal..._ In his hallucinations, they are no longer equals, a boy and a girl in love, but two beings separated by a chasm of difference. In his mind, their relationship is fraught with taboo, with mortal danger... Why? Why does he see her as _forbidden?_

Edward fears that he will harm Bella if he gives in to his desires, that he will put her very life in danger. Is there something about the sexual act itself that is associated with terror in his mind? With _death? _Love and death are curiously intertwined in his hallucinations.

I decided to question Edward further about this feelings for Bella.

"Edward," I began gently. "You love Bella a great deal, don't you?"

A shadow fell over his beautiful face as he answered softly: "More than life itself."

"And yet your relationship has never progressed past a kiss?" I phrased the question as tactfully as I could. "Why would that be, Edward?"

He flushed. "I – of course I have been tempted… But you must understand, doctor, that I am _dangerous._ If I were to… to make love to Bella, I could _kill _her. Inadvertently."

The act of love as an act of murder? This is curious. Very curious indeed. What on earth lies behind Edward's notion that love _kills? _

"It is far better for her to live a normal life," he said softly. "She needs to forget about me and live an ordinary life."

"A normal life with someone else?"

I could tell by his face that he did not like this suggestion one bit. He sighed. "Well… I suppose it would be inevitable. It will be difficult for me to see her with someone else, but she would be better off without me… Without me, she will be safe. Of course there are others who are attracted to her. I can read their minds, you know. I can tell when someone wants her. Take Jacob Black, for example. He is very much in love with her."

"Jacob?" I rifled through my notes. No, no mention of anyone called Jacob Black in the letter from Dr. Cullen. He must be a part of Edward's imaginary world. "Who is he?"

"A kid from the Indian reservation. Totally smitten with Bella. They are old enemies of ours, the Quileute Indians. They know who we are, know that we are vampires, know what we can do to people… They call us The Cold Ones."

"The Cold Ones? And why is that?"

Edward looked at me with pity and exasperation, as if I was a little slow. "Because of our cold skin, of course. Surely, you must have noticed that when we shook hands with you at our first meeting."

"Ah, yes, of course. Cold skin." I nodded in agreement, recalling that neither Edward's hand nor any of the others' had been particularly chilly in any way.

_How very odd. Why does he believe that vampires have cold skin? _

He went on, a faraway look in his golden eyes. "The Quileute Indians, on the other hand… They are as hot-blooded as we are cold… They are among the few creatures who understand what we are, and among the few who can destroy us…"

"_Creatures?" _

"Yes." Edward nodded. "They are wolves, you see. According to their legends, they are descended from wolves, and when enraged or threatened, they can still turn into wolves, assume their true forms."

_Vampires and werewolves… The cold and the hot… Opposites, and yet, perhaps, two sides of the same coin? For vampires and werewolves are both hunters; they both transform others with their deadly bite… _

_Is Jacob Black Edward's alter ego, I wonder? Edward is cold, reserved, measured. He keeps his emotions under control. Does Jacob Black represent the side of Edward that lets all the emotions out? Black… The dark side of Edward? Jacob- a reference to the biblical Jacob, perhaps? The one who stole his twin brother's birthright? __I wonder what did happen to Edward's own brother, the one who died... _

Werewolves and vampires... In Edward's mind, Bella is in constant danger, it seems.

But whatever the werewolves represent, they are apparently far less dangerous to Bella than vampires. For Edward tells me that not only is he drawn to Bella's blood, but that there are other vampires after her as well. He and his family, he tells me, have promised to abstain from human blood, satisfying their thirst by drinking animal blood instead. But another group of vampires, more dangerous ones that drink human blood, have found Bella as well.

Edward spoke of these other vampires with extreme trepidation. "There were three of them," he explained. "Laurent, James, and Victoria. When James understood that I had feelings for Bella, he became obsessed with _hunting_ her… Laurent warned us, but James tracked Bella, and tried to kill her… We were able to kill _him_ in the end, so Bella is safe for now. But I am still _very_ worried about Victoria…"

Laurent – the name of a saint, I believe? St. Laurent? Perhaps he represent the side of Edward who is anxious to protect Bella. But James, who is he? The more dangerous side of Edward, the part of Edward who wishes to destroy what he loves? But _why?_

James, Victoria, and Edward... The names, I noticed, all have something in common: They are all British royal names. King James, Queen Victoria, King Edward... Wasn't Queen Victoria the mother of King Edward? Does this signify, perhaps, that the figures of the vampires James and Victoria are closely related to Edward as well, or even that they are symbolic representations of Edward himself? Perhaps Edward fears his own murderous impulses, symbolized by the sadistic James and the cruel Victoria? Or is there a deeper significance to these figures that eludes me?

The murderous impulse... I asked my efficient secretary, Miss M., to see if there was any further information available about the death of Edward's brother fifteen years ago. But even Miss M. was able to uncover very little. She found a few more newspaper articles, brief notices indicating that the mystery was still unsolved, and she managed to track down one person from the local sheriff's office who had been associated with the case at the time.

"A very strange case indeed," he wrote in his email to her. "Even the FBI could not make heads or tails of it. There were reports of a foreign woman traveling in that area at the time, and we put a lot of effort into tracking her down, since she was the only stranger anyone had seen near Forks at the time. We thought she may have been the mother of the two little boys. But when we finally found her, it turned out that she was mentally ill, and even an interpreter could not make any sense of anything she was saying. I am afraid I do not remember her nationality any more; perhaps she was Russian or Romanian. We did not have access to DNA testing at the time, so we never knew if she was related to the boys or not. Nor did we ever discover how the older of the two boys met with his death. But the coroner's report included one detail that was not made public at the time, since we did not want to cause any kind of superstitious panic among the locals. It is true that the boy only had a slight mark on his neck, and no other injuries. But the coroner's office nevertheless concluded that the direct cause of death was massive blood loss. In fact, it seemed as if _all the blood had been sucked out of his body..."_

I read the final sentence of the printout Miss M. had given me with - oh, I hate to admit it - a sense of superstitious dread. I had to remind myself, yet again, that _Edward is not a vampire. _He is merely a teenage boy suffering from strange delusions. Some traumatic event in his past has caused his flight into madness, and I will uncover it.

After Miss M. had given me whatever scant information she had been able to find, she turned to leave. But as she reached the door, she paused for a moment.

"There is one more thing, doctor..."

"Yes, Miss M.?"

She hesitated. "I - I feel silly for even _mentioning _this, but..."

"Miss M., I need to know _anything_ you could possibly tell me that has any bearing on this case. No matter how silly. _Anything._"

"Well..." She swallowed audibly. "As I said, it's the silliest thing... It's just that I've had this feeling, ever since the poor boy first walked into the office, that - that _I've seen him before_..."

"Seen him before? Edward, you mean?"

She nodded. "Yes. Well, not him, perhaps, but someone who looks just like him. I can't remember _where, _though. Perhaps I saw his picture in a book or a newspaper..."

I looked at her with interest. How very odd! "Did you see any reports of the mystery in Forks fifteen years ago, perhaps? Back when it happened?"

She shook her head slowly. "Oh, no. It was long before that. I think it was back when I was a little girl..."

"What?" I blinked in surprise. "But that's impossible! When you were a little girl, Edward wasn't born yet..."

"I know." Her voice trembled a little. "Strange, isn't it?"

_Very strange indeed..._


	3. Chapter 3

_From the Files of Dr. D.: The Case of Edward C._

_Week 3:_

Edward's hallucinations seem to be getting darker. He believes that Bella is in constant mortal danger, both from himself and others.

_I realized that our relationship could not last. It is much too dangerous for her to be around me and my family. Alice decided to throw a party for Bella on her 18th birthday. Her father, Charlie Swan, is a nice guy, but not one to throw a party... But Bella cut her finger, just a slight paper cut, and Jasper smelled her blood and tried to kill her. I realized then that I had to break up with Bella. I had to do it in order to protect her. It is too dangerous for her to be around vampires. I told her I no longer loved her, and that I did not wish to see her. How easily she believed me! She was deeply unhappy for a while, but then she began to spend time with Jacob. Jacob, the werewolf. _

_Jacob was good for her, but then she realized that she could hear my voice inside her head if she was in danger. And so Bella, out of love for me, began to take desperate chances, just to hear my voice. She fell off a motor cycle, she went cliff diving. Alice can see things; she has visions of the future. When she saw Bella diving off the cliff, we all believed her to be dead. _

_I realized I could not live without her, and I decided to die as well. Vampires do not die easily, so I decided to go to Italy, to Volterra, and plead with the ancient vampires, the Volturi, to destroy me. __They refused to kill me, so I understood that I had to provoke them: I had to show myself to the public. The Volturi have lived in Volterra for over 3000 years. They are the closest thing to vampire royalty. Aro, Caius, and Marcus... They are peaceful, but they wish to keep the existence of vampires a secret. If I showed myself to humans, in full daylight, they would understand that I was different. Vampires glitter in the sunlight. If I had shown myself to the public, the Volturi would have killed me. _

_But Bella wasn't dead, and she and Alice came to Italy to save me from the Volturi. And when the Volturi saw Bella, they were amazed. They realized that she, although mortal, possesses astonishing gifts. I can read anyone's mind, except hers. She is resistant even to the powers of the Volturi. _

My goodness - what a story! I decided to find out from Alice exactly what _had_happened on Bella's eighteenth birthday...

As it turned out, Alice had indeed arranged a party for Bella on her eighteenth birthday.

"Oh, it was lovely!" she told me, in her melodious voice. "I absolutely adore party planning, and Bella's father wasn't going to do anything... Men aren't very good at these things, you know."

"That would be Charlie, I take it? Charlie Swan?"

Alice looked very confused. "Charlie? No, Bella's father's name is Robert. And their last name is Jones." She smiled, a sudden, luminous smile that just about made my poor old heart stop. "But I'm not surprised that poor Edward wants to give Bella the last name "Swan". After all, she _is_ as lovely as a swan, isn't she?" Alice sighed a little.

Do all young girls admire their brother's girlfriends this much, I wonder?

Swan - yes indeed, it is easy to see the symbolism in that name! The lovely Bella, as beautiful and graceful as a swan... But why would Edward insist that her father's name is _Charlie? _Charlie... _Charlie and Carlisle... _The two names are curiously similar, aren't they? Almost anagrams? Almost as if they are two aspects of the same father figure?

"And what, my dear Alice, did happen at Bella's birthday party?"

Alice flushed a little. "Oh... Well, it was my fault. I shouldn't have served champagne, obviously."

"Champagne?"

"Well, we are all a little young to drink, but I thought it would be so lovely to have a champagne toast, and Carlisle and Esme didn't mind..."

_Didn't they? How remarkably open-minded of the young doctor and his wife... _

Alice looked distinctly uncomfortable. "And then... Well, Jasper had a little too much to drink. They champagne went straight to his head, the poor dear. He is not used to it, you see..."

_And the rest of you are...?_

I leaned forward. "So what exactly happened at this birthday party, Miss Alice?"

"Well..." she squirmed a little. A lovely, graceful squirm, but a squirm nonetheless. "Jasper got drunk and tried to... well, _kiss_ Bella, out on the balcony. And then Edward came along and saw him, and he just about lost it. The two of them had a terrible fight. Edward was sober, and Jasper was not, so I'm afraid Jasper took quite a beating, poor dear..."

"I see." I nodded. "But my dear Alice, isn't Jasper your _boyfriend? _Surely, this event must have been upsetting to you as well?"

Alice leaned her head a little to one side. The look she gave me was both amazingly lovely and strangely serene. "Oh. Well, of course. But I was mostly upset for Bella, of course. Poor dear, she was quite shaken up..." Alice sounded quite concerned for Bella's emotional distress.

Now, it is a known fact that no amount of psychoanalytical training can prepare a man to understand the mind of a teenage girl, but even so, this was getting _odd_. Jasper, Alice's boyfriend, had kissed the lovely Bella, and yet Alice was upset _for Bella's sake? What-?_

And then, according to Edward, Bella had started spending time with Jacob, and imaginary werewolf. Why a werewolf? Does the werewolf represent danger, a threat, the big bad wolf? Or simply another aspect of the vampire that Edward believes himself to be?

Werewolves and vampires... The blood-sucking monsters than transform their innocent victims... Both expressions, perhaps, of our ancient fears of the unknown, of monsters that lurk in the darkness, of monsters that kill... The werewolf, the _man-wolf, _the man who loses his humanity and becomes a monster... Perhaps the werewolf can be seen as a symbol of homicidal insanity itself, the impulse that makes a man lose his very humanity and become a monster?

But the werewolf is not just a monster in ancient legends, but also an _outcast. _The ancient Norsemen referred to both werewolves and criminal outlaws by the same term, _vargr. _For the wolf was an outlaw, and an outlaw was a wolf, cast out of society for his transgressions, transformed in the eyes of his fellow men into something less than human... _Vargr... _Doesn't the old Gothic Bible translation refer to Christ, the outcast, as v_argr, _as an outlaw, a werewolf, cast out from society? Christ the werewolf...? The werewolf as outcast and redeemer in one?

Bella confirms that she does not know anyone named Jacob. Nor, she assures me, is she given to cliff-diving or other extreme sports. She is a quiet young girl who leads an uneventful life, apart of course, from the fact that she is still in love with a boyfriend who is losing his mind...

There can be no doubt that Edwards loves her back, or that their break-up has caused him immense pain. I am watching him very closely, alert for any worsening of the suicidal impulses expressed in his delusion about the avenging Volturi.

_The Volturi, the vampire royalty..._ Odd, how the theme of _royalty _recurs in Edward's hallucinations... I don't quite know what to make of this, but I suspect that it significant in some way.

Who, or what, do these Volturi, the ancient vampires from Volterra, represent? Volterra is a lovely town in Tuscany, but the name also evokes the 16th century Italian painter Daniele da Volterra, famous for one of the worst _cover-ups _in history: In a preposterous act of modesty, he painted loincloths on all the naked figures in Michelangelo's magnificent painting _The Last Judgment. __Do the Volturi also symbolize some kind of cover-up or concealment, I wonder? _Or perhaps a sexual modesty as absurd as the one that earned da Volterra his humorous nickname Il Braghettone - "the pants guy"? Do the Volturi perhaps represent some kind of sexual repression?

_Aro, Caius, and Marcus._ What a curious trinity! _Aro... _The name would mean "I plough" in Latin, and it doesn't take a Freudian scholar to read erotic significance into that name. Ahem! "Ploughing" is one of the oldest sexual metaphors of humankind, perhaps as old as agriculture itself. Caius and Marcus.. Both ancient Roman names, of course. Very appropriate for someone who are said to have lived in Volterra for over 3000 years!

_No, wait. Three thousand years... _Even the Romans haven't lived in Tuscany that long! Surely Edward would know that. But Volterra, I seem to recall, has been around a lot longer than the Romans. Before Volterra was overrun by the Romans, it was an ancient Etruscan settlement. The enigmatic Etruscans, the ancient people who flourished in Italy before the Romans, and who eventually disappeared, leaving behind only some mysterious graves, a handful of brief inscriptions, and a few personal names that eventually found their way into the Latin language. Names like Cai and Marce, _Caius and Marcus..._

Very little is known about ancient Etruscan myths and legends. Some of their gods were eventually adopted by the conquering Romans. And I seem to recall something about _wolves..._ _Canu_, the god of death and the underworld, is a wolf. But even the Etruscan sky god, the _glittering_Tinia, is sometimes called "the wolf-like one"... Edward, too, believes that he glitters in the sunlight, and Jacob the werewolf seems to be his dark alter ego...

_Caius... _Also spelled _Gaius_by the Romans, I believe? Caesar's first name, wasn't it? Gaius Julius Caesar, the emperor. Another name evoking royalty... Edward is a well-read boy. I wonder if he has also read Shakespeare's _King Lear_? The poor insane king Lear has a good friend who calls himself _Caius, _but who is actually the Duke of Kent in disguise... Does the Caius in Edward's hallucinations also represent disguise and concealment, I wonder?

_Edward is hiding something... _He is hiding a secret so terrible that he would rather lose Bella than have her know what his dark secret is... But his subconscious is trying to communicate, in its strange language of symbols, what his conscious mind is trying to conceal. What are you hiding, Edward? And why do you think this secret would bring death to Bella?


	4. Chapter 4

_From the Files of Dr. D._

_The Case of Edward C., Week 4_

_An army of newborns? _This has to be one of the most bizarre images I have ever encountered. I can practically envision a squadron of homicidal babies as Edward keeps referring to the newborn army! But no, I must not be facetious about something that he himself takes deadly seriously. But I wonder what lies behind this curious idea of _newborns... _Edward's recent hallucinations are full of references to birth. _Why? _He describes newborn vampires, but they are far from sweet little babies with fangs – rather, they are terrifying undead beings on a murderous rampage. He tells me that the newborn vampires, the ones that have most recently been turned into undead beings, are the most dangerous of all. What is it about _birth_ that Edward fears so much, I wonder?

His hallucinations are filled with murder, blood, and terror. And Bella is always at the center of it all. Victoria, the lovely female vampire, whose mate James was destroyed as he attempted to murder Bella, is now back for revenge, he tells me. _Victoria is out to get Bella. She_ is the one who is behind this horrifying army of newborns...

In Edward's hallucinations, Bella wants to become a vampire; she wants to become like him... But he refuses, because he would rather she stay human. Hm. What Bella _really _wants, I gather, is to have a fulfilling sexual relationship with Edward. But the sexual act is somehow transformed into a vampire's poisonous bite in Edward's delusions. Why does Edward believe that sleeping with Bella would transform her into a monster? I can make no sense of this.

Edward tells me that Bella is also growing closer to Jacob, the werewolf who loves her. She is getting to know Jacob and his family and friends on the reservation. Jacob, Seth, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Jared...

Wait - do all Native Americans have names straight out of the Bible now? How odd! What happened to good old fashioned Native American names like Little Bear or Blue Sky? Ah.. wait a minute... _These names are not just from the Bible, but from the Book of Mormon! _Edward must be familiar with Mormonism... For the Book of Mormon speaks of Native Americans as the descendants of Israelites who came to America. And among their wise prophets and leaders are _Jacob, Sam, Jared, Seth, and Levi._.. And the Lamanites, the Native American Israelites, are described in the Book of Mormon as having "skin of blackness" - _the Black family! _The Native Americans as prophets in the wilderness... But prophets in the wilderness are not always heard, are they, even when they speak the truth.

What truth is it that they speak, these Native American prophets? The Quileutes in Edward's hallucinations are all saying the same thing: _That vampires are deadly and not to be trusted, and that Bella is in danger. _

But the werewolves are willing to work, reluctantly, with the vampires_ to protect Bella from Victoria and the army of newborns... _What on earth does this mean? What do the newborns represent? Something new and dreadful arising... _Riley _is their leader, Victoria's new lover... The one who _riles_ them up? Newborn vampires... Abnormal life arising from death... _Whose _death?

A fierce battle ensues, and Riley is destroyed by Seth, the werewolf. _Seth, the wolf._.. Ah! In addition to the Biblical Seth and the Mormon prophet Seth, there is of course also another well known Seth: The Egyptian god of chaos, the god with the head of a curious dog-like animal that may be a jackal or a wolf... _And the Egyptian Seth is a murderer;_ he kills and dismembers his own brother, the god Osiris.

_Edward's brother died, too,_ I recalled suddenly. But not by Edward's hand, surely, for Edward was just a baby at the time. A baby... _A newborn? _Oh, this is absurd! Of course little Edward didn't have anything to do with his brother's death...

Victoria is finally decapitated by Edward, and Bella is safe... for now. Edward promises to turn Bella into a vampire, if only she will marry him first...

I was listening to Edward's dramatic story with interest. _So much blood... _

And a marriage proposal, too? I decided to check with Bella. I asked Edward to send Bella in to see me when we were done talking. She was in the waiting room, as always. I caught a brief glimpse of them together in the waiting room. Edward's beautiful face was careful, guarded, reserved. He did not respond when Bella stroked his face gently before coming in to see me. _Always so careful... _Of what, I wonder?

I asked Bella, as tactfully as I could, if Edward had ever proposed marriage to her. Unshed tears glittered in her lovely dark eyes as she shook her head. "No, nothing like that. Nothing specific. In the beginning, before he fell ill, he talked about us being together for always, but now he is always saying that I am in danger around him..."

"And do you believe that he is speaking the truth? _Are _you in danger, Bella?"

She shook her head impatiently. "The only danger I'm facing is _dying_ of heartbreak over all of this..."

"And you don't think... that Edward himself is a danger to you in any way? After all, his hallucinations are rather violent?"

Her big brown eyes looked straight into mine. "I wouldn't care even if he _was_ a danger to me. I love him, and I want him back."

Hm. Remarkable creatures, teenage girls... They are capable of so much love, and so little self-preservation. Good thing the Cullens are watching out for her. Well, at least I _think_ they are...

I remained in my chair for a while after Bella had left, pondering. My musings were interrupted by the buzzing of the intercom on my desk.

"A Mike Newell is here to see you, doctor. He does not have an appointment, but wishes to speak to you about Bella."

I raised my eyebrows. "About Bella? Please send him in, Miss M."

Mike Newell turned out to be a pleasant, round-faced teenage boy with a frank, open manner.

"I'm sorry about coming to see you without an appointment, Sir," he began, "but I heard that you are treating Edward Cullen, and that Bella has been to see you as well. I'm a friend of Bella's." He flushed a little. An admirer of Bella's, as well as a friend, perhaps?

I smiled at him. "Now, Mike, you understand that I am not at liberty to discuss any of my patients with you, including who may or may not have been here to see me."

He looked a little flustered, but nodded quickly. "Yes, I understand all that…"

"You, of course," I hastened to add, "may choose to share any information with _me_ that you wish, as long as you understand that I cannot tell _you_ anything about any of my patients."

"Oh. Right." He looked relieved. "Well, I _do_ think there are some things you should know. I know I'm butting in, but… But I'm really concerned about Bella, you see…"

I nodded. "You are free to share any concerns you may have with me. I will keep them absolutely confidential."

"That's good." He took a deep breath. "Well, here's the thing. I - I really like Bella. A _lot_. But I know she is not interested in going out with me, no matter what happens with her and Edward. I can accept that. But I still care about her and want her to be safe, and I don't think she is at all _safe _with Edward Cullen. Not just because he is crazy... I'm sorry, I know that's not what you doctors call it, I just don't know how else to... What I mean is... I know he thinks he's a vampire and all that, and I feel bad for him. And maybe you can give him some medicines or something that can help him. But even if he gets the right meds and becomes like a regular person again, I'm still worried about him. I didn't like how he treated Bella even _before_ he got sick."

I leaned forward, interested. "What do you mean?"

He swallowed. "Well, he's really _obsessed_ with her. Of course it's easy to be a bit obsessed with Bella, but his obsession was over the top. Kind of unhealthy. He says he wants to protect her, but in his book that meant that when they started dating, she needed to stop seeing other people. Even friends. He wanted her to stay with him at all times, _for her own protection._ And Bella even mentioned once that he used to sneak into her bedroom every night, just to sit there and watch her sleep. That's really creepy..."

"Hm." I had to agree with him there.

"You know," Mike went on, "I read this article once on _abusers_, and it said that they start by controlling the other person, watching their every move, cutting them off from other people. And then they turn violent... That kind of sounds like Edward, to tell you the truth. Except I don't think he's ever hurt Bella. _Yet_, anyway. But I'm really worried about her. I'm glad they are not together anymore, but I know she wants him back. And I thought that if you can make him better, they might get back together again. And I really don't like that idea. I mean, of course I'd rather date her myself, but that's not what I mean. If she was going out with some random guy who was really nice, I would be jealous, but I wouldn't have this sick feeling in my stomach, like I do when she's with _him..."_

This was all very interesting. And very disturbing. "I see. Thank you for telling me about your concerns, Mike. Much appreciated."

"Sure." Mike got up and shook my hand. "Thanks for seeing me. And please - _please _look after Bella."

I smiled at him. I liked the boy a lot. He certainly didn't possess the almost preternatural beauty of the Cullens, but he had a good heart. Bella could do a lot worse. _And maybe she has..._


	5. Chapter 5

_From the Files of Dr. D._

_The Case of Edward C., Week 5:_

Edward is getting worse. His delusions are rapidly growing more intense and more disconnected from reality. He was looking very ill this morning. His skin is always pale, but his pallor has now assumed an almost ghostly hue, and there is a feverish glitter in his eyes. He is no longer speaking to Bella directly, or communicating coherently to anyone in his family. The Cullens are extremely worried.

Edward is not answering my questions anymore; he simply sits quietly in my office and talks, as much to himself as to me. Why is has his illness taken such a sudden turn for the worse? What is happening to him?

I listened carefully to his fevered ramblings, for I do believe that his subconscious knows what ails him, and that some part of his mind is trying to communicate the truth to me, if I can only decipher the strange symbols of his hallucinations.

_She agreed to marry me. Bella is my wife now. We travel to a remote island for our honeymoon, the Isle Esme, and Bella becomes pregnant right away. But something is wrong; there is something unnatural about the child in her womb. It is a monster, a vampire-human hybrid, and it will be the death of her. She must get rid of it, before it kills her! But Bella refuses; she wants to keep the baby. She gives birth to a baby girl, but Bella is dying. I have no choice; I transform her into a vampire as well. _

_We call our daughter Renesmee, after Bella's mother and mine. And Jacob loves her from the moment he sees her. He calls her Nessie, which makes Bella upset; she does not want her child named after a monster! But others grow suspicious; they believe her to be a forbidden vampire child, an "immortal child". The vampire Irina reports her to the Volturi. Immortal children are not allowed to live. There was a vampire named Sasha who created an immortal child; his name was Vasilii. The Volturi found out and executed them both. But Sasha's three daughters were not immortal children; they were allowed to live. _

_The Volturi come for us; they come for the child. But Bella protects us all; she is a natural shield against their powers. And Alice and Jasper find another being like Renesmee and prove to the Volturi what kind of creature she is: Not an immortal child, but something different, a being that should be allowed to live._

Children... Children play in important part in Edward's delusions. First it was an army of murderous newborns, and now his own newborn child, threatening to destroy its own mother! Is this why he is afraid of consummating his relationship with Bella, because he fears that she will give birth to something monstrous? What kind of monster would she produce? A child who will inherit his mental illness, perhaps?

Renesmee, the hybrid child, is neither human nor vampire, or perhaps _both_ human and vampire. An immortal child, who must not be allowed to live... _Why_ must she not be allowed to live? Nessie... Like the Loch Ness monster! Of course Bella would not want her child to be a monster. Does she represent a real child, I wonder, or something more abstract - a monstrous consequence of Bella and Edward's forbidden union?

Sasha and Vasilii were executed. He was a monster, unnatural, and should not live... _Sasha and Vasilii... _Sasha, the traditional Russian nickname for Alexandra, or Alexander? There are so many Russian names in this story: Sasha, Vasilii, Irina, Tanya. And wasn't there also a Demetri, one of the Volturi?

I wonder why Sasha's son was different from his sisters? Why was he an accursed immortal child, while they were not?

Some children are forbidden... Why? The imaginary Nessie, named after an archaic monster, was conceived on the Isle Esme, an island named, perhaps significantly, after Carli_sle_ and Esme... A strange place for a first sexual encounter, an island named after your parents. There is a hint of something almost incestuous here...

Something incestuous... There are allusions in Edward's hallucinations to family relationships that are a little too close... He has transformed the name of Bella's father, made it similar to his own father's name: Charlie and Carlisle... But if the two fathers are, on one level, one and the same, then that would make him and Bella _siblings... _Perhaps this is a fear that all adopted children share when their own birth family is unknown: If you do not know who your parents are, you could end up marrying a sibling. And some of the Cullens will do just that, it appears: Marry a sibling... Rosalie and Emmett, Alice and Jasper. They are _social_ siblings, adopted siblings, rather than sisters and brothers by blood, but there is still something vaguely discomforting about this... And to make things more complicated, Jasper appears to be drawn to Bella as well, his brother's girlfriend. And from what I've seen of Alice's admiration of Bella, I'm not so sure that the lovely pixie doesn't harbor similar feelings for Bella on some level as well...

Is _this_ what Edward fears? Some kind of incestuous union that will produce an unnatural child? Perhaps _he_ himself is the product of such a union? No, there has to be more to his fears than that. The _blood... _The scarlet line that runs through all his delusions... There has to be some significance to the _blood. _

...

"Doctor? May I interrupt for a moment?" Miss M.'s voice from the intercom interrupted my stream of thoughts.

"Of course, Miss M. Any time."

But what was this? Miss M. was almost as pale as Edward as she entered my office, a large leather-bound book under her arm. She sank into a chair.

"My dear Miss M., what has happened? Are you ill?"

She shook her head slowly. "No, not ill. Just a bit shaken up." She swallowed. "I found something in this book that I thought you should see."

She opened the volume to a bookmarked page and handed it to me. I looked at it with curiosity. Dear me, it usually takes a lot to rattle Miss M.! This was going to be something interesting!

The book was a work on Russian history. It was open to a page about the tragic death of the Romanovs, the last czar of Russia and his family. I knew the story well, of course. After the Russian revolution, the czar himself, the empress Alexandra and their children were executed by revolutionary soldiers in 1918. But there are all kinds of fantastic legends about one or more of the children surviving the bullets and the bayonets, perhaps the youngest girl, Anastasia, or her brother Alexei, the young heir to the throne. Mysterious women have claimed to be the lost Anastasia, and a few men have claimed to be Alexei. _Including, I believe, a man called Vasilii? _

Vasilii and Sasha... In Russian, the empress Alexandra, Alexei's mother, would be given the nickname Sasha, wouldn't she? What an odd coincidence...

I looked a little more closely at the illustrations on the page. W_hat was this? _ I stared at the black and white portrait of the handsome young tsarevitch Alexei, a pale teenage boy with large, soulful eyes. _There was something familiar about that face! _

_It was Edward's face... _

No. This was impossible! The resemblance was uncanny, but nothing more. The boy in the picture had been dead since 1918.

_Wait... _Didn't Edward say he had been transformed into a vampire _in 1918? _I felt a sudden shiver run through my body.

Then I slammed the book shut.

"Enough of this!" I said firmly, as much to myself as to Miss M. "There is an interesting resemblance between Edward and the young tsarevitch, but that's all. I refuse to believe..."

Now, what was it exactly that I refused to believe? I might as well say it out loud.

I sighed. "I refuse to believe that Edward is the lost heir of the Russian czar, transformed into a vampire in 1918. That would be completely _absurd._"

Miss M. nodded eagerly. "Yes, it would be." She was very ready to agree with me. "Coincidences... All coincidences. Including, of course, all the poor boy's talk of _royalty, _and the reports in the paper that some poor disturbed _Russian_ woman was seen near the place where Edward was found as a baby..."

Ah, yes. I had forgotten about that.

"And they _did_ have a lot of wolves in Russia back then, when the czar lived. I overheard the poor boy speaking about wolves... And about being _cold. _You know, the Romanovs were imprisoned in Siberia in the winter before their execution. And their execution was carried out by a Bolshevik by the name of Yaakov, or _Jacob, _who wanted to rid the society of the royal parasites, the _bloodsuckers_, as the communists called them..."

"My dear Miss M., _enough!" _I got up from my desk and began to pace the room while I turned the facts of the case over in my head. Blood. Vampires. Royalty. _Victoria. _Wait, wasn't the tsarevich Alexei related to Queen _Victoria_ and King _James_ on his mother's side...? The royal families of Europe were always interbreeding - quite unhealthy. But surely, this didn't mean-?

Oh, _seriously! _I pulled myself together. Edward was a boy with strange hallucinations, but that did _not_ make him one of the accursed Romanovs!

I froze mid-step. _The curse of the Romanovs! Blood, always blood... _That was it!

This would explain everything, Edward's obsession with blood, his brother's tragic death, his fear of the monstrous newborns!

I reached for my phone and dialed Dr. Cullen's number. He had to get Edward to the emergency room at once. There was no time to lose.

...

"So he _is_ a Romanov after all!" Miss M. sounded rather pleased.

"I suspect he is," I said, "although certainly not the tsarevich himself. That would have been _impossible..._"

"Of course it would," Miss M. agreed readily. I smiled a little.

"Whether he is a distant descendant of the Romanovs or not, Edward does indeed suffer from the same rare disease that afflicted Alexei and other male members of his family, the terrifying hereditary disease passed on from Queen Victoria's family to the Romanovs through the Empress Alexandra: He is suffering from _hemophilia,_ a disease whose name literally means "the love of blood"."

"_The love of blood... Blood-thirst. _" Miss M. shuddered a little.

"A hemophiliac lacks a clotting factor in the blood, and this can be deadly. The smallest scratch can make a person bleed to death. I suspect that this is what happened to Edward's unfortunate brother. The disease is passed down through the female line, although it only affects males. Sometimes the bleeding is internal, and when it occurs within the brain, it can lead to psychosis and hallucinations. I suspect that Edward's hallucinations began with a small rupture in one of the blood vessels in his brain. I think he must have known, unconsciously, what ailed him, although his conscious mind was not able to articulate it. He is a well-read boy, and perhaps some part of his mind realized the connection between his own disease and that of the Romanovs and began to spin a strange tale of blood and danger..."

"What will happen to him now?"

"I received a call from the hospital. He is out of danger; they were able to stop the slight bleed in his brain. He will need to be monitored very carefully in the future and given regular infusions of a compatible clotting factor, but I do believe he will be all right. After all, he has a _very_ loyal girlfriend by his side who will watch over him."

Miss M. broke out in a delighted smile. "So, they are back together, then?"

"Oh, absolutely. Edward's delusions are gone, and he is ready to resume a normal life. One day, they may even be able to have children. Although his subconscious mind was terrified that he may pass on his hemophilia, his dreaded "vampirism" to Bella and their future children, there is no reason for his fear. Bella, of course, won't catch it from him - although his doctors _do_ advice him to be a little careful when making love, so he does not get injured. And his children will not suffer from the disease. Hemophilia is hereditary, but since it is only passed down from mother to son, Bella's children will be free from the disease, since it is _he _who has the disease, not _she. _Their children will be _shielded_ from the affliction by their mother's genes."

And with this I will conclude my notes on the strange case of Edward C. I received a beautiful letter from Bella, thanking me for saving her lover and bringing her more happiness than she had dared to hope for. Ah, the lovely Bella! She never became the bride of a vampire after all, but Miss M. is still secretly hoping that the man Bella loves is a long-lost prince.

Perhaps it is true.


End file.
